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Starvation and Strife Menace Torn Kenya

NAIROBI, Kenya — One year after this country exploded in ethnic bloodshed, trouble is brewing here again.

Ten million people face starvation, partly because farmers in crucial food-producing areas who fled their homes last year have not returned, instead withdrawing deeper into their ethnic enclaves, deeper into fear.

At the same time, public confidence in the Kenyan government is plummeting. Top politicians have been implicated in an endless string of scandals involving tourism, fuel, guns and corn.

On Wednesday, United Nations officials called for the country’s police chief and attorney general to resign after a United Nations investigation revealed that more than 500 people had been killed by police death squads. One of the Kenyan whistle-blowers himself was shot to death after providing detailed evidence.

“There’s a lot of anger,” said Maina Kiai, the former director of Kenya’s national human rights commission. “If we don’t start resolving these issues soon, things could be worse than before. There could be complete collapse.”

The grand coalition government that was formed last year between Kenya’s governing party and the opposition, after a deeply flawed election, is now widely dismissed as the “grand letdown.” It managed to stop the bloodletting between different ethnic groups that tore this country apart in 2008, killing more than 1,000 people, but has accomplished little else.

The only thing Kenya’s ruling class seems to agree on is refusing to pay most of its taxes, even though Kenyan politicians are already among the highest paid in the world, a stunning fact in one of the world’s poorest countries.

“Corruption is the glue holding this government together,” said John Githongo, the director of an anticorruption institute here.

Kenya’s legendary safari business, an engine of the economy, has not bounced back either. Tourist arrivals were down about 35 percent in 2008 compared with 2007, leading to thousands of layoffs and a steady stream of unemployed youths marching back to the already teeming slums.

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Mary Macharia, a victim of last year's ethnic violence in Kenya, was burned and her daughter was killed when a mob set fire to a church. "Some days I hate myself," said Ms. Macharia. Credit
Jehad Nga for The New York Times

President Obama, whose father was Kenyan, has become a savior to many people here, in part because Kenyans say their own leaders have been such a disappointment.

Ethnicity and the country’s lingering Balkanization are topics studiously avoided in Parliament. Few of Kenya’s politicians seem ready to tackle land reform, constitutional reform or the dangerous culture of impunity, all of which were called urgent priorities after the bloodshed last year. Many Kenyans are urging the International Criminal Court in The Hague to get involved, because they have no faith that the Kenyan justice system will prosecute the well-known political figures suspected of orchestrating last year’s killings.

A shiny, bubbly scar stretches from her ear to her lips. The right side of her face looks melted. A glance in the mirror jolts her mind back to the burning church where her daughter was killed a year ago, along with 30 others.

“Some days,” she said, “I hate myself.”

Across Kenya, near the western town of Kisumu, Millicent Awino is all alone, a young woman who used to have two children and a decent job packing flowers. She is essentially a serf now, her time, her sweat and her body at the beck and call of her ex-husband’s family, the only people who would take her in after she fled the violence that consumed her son and daughter and the ethnically mixed town where she used to live. She recently had another child, by the ex-husband who came into her hut one night, but the baby died of malaria.

“I think I’m done with children,” she said.

She also said she would never return to her former home.

Kenya, once a nation of so much promise, remains a land divided. The country pulled apart in 2008, when hundreds of thousands of people fled ethnically mixed areas for the safety of homogeneous zones. This was the result of a disputed election in which the president, Mwai Kibaki, was widely believed to have rigged the results to stay in power. Supporters of the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, who hails from a different ethnic group, then vented their rage on Mr. Kibaki’s people.

On Jan. 1, 2008, Mrs. Macharia and four of her children ran from their farm near Eldoret, in the Rift Valley, to a nearby church to seek shelter.

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Ethnic clashes in places like Eldoret caused people to flee.

The Macharias are Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group. A mob made up of men from other ethnic groups surrounded the church, barricaded the doors and set it on fire. Mrs. Macharia tried to escape but tripped on a burning mattress, falling on her right side. She had her 3-year-old daughter, Joyce, tied to her back and the little girl flipped into the flames.

But for the first time in her life, she is broke. Her family used to have a nice farmhouse, sheep, chickens and cows. Now they live in a one-room apartment atop a sun-baked hill, surrounded by other Kikuyus, living off handouts.

“We used to have it all,” said Haron Macharia, Mary’s husband. “Now, we’re beggars.”

He said he could never go back to Eldoret because his neighbors had turned on him and they were like “snakes.”

The Macharias are worried about their 12-year-old son, James. He, too, was trapped in the church that day, though he survived.

Over the summer, Kenyan children rioted in hundreds of schools, ransacking classrooms and burning down dorms. Ostensibly, the children were upset about exams. In truth, it may have been a collective outburst after all the violence they had witnessed.

Mrs. Awino’s two children, Wycliffe and Cynthia, were victims of revenge. Mrs. Awino, 24, is a Luo, a large and historically marginalized ethnic group, and while she was at work on Jan. 27, 2008, packing roses for $2 a day, a Kikuyu mob burned the house where her children were staying.

Her losses do not seem to end. After her 3-month-old baby died in early February, Mrs. Awino’s in-laws called her cursed and told her to leave.

“I would,” she said. “But I have nowhere else to go.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Starvation And Strife Menace Torn Kenya. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe